Terrence Hood, 23rd Viscount Hood
Fleet Admiral Terrence Samuel Hood, 23rd Viscount Hood, OBE, KB, VC, DSC, LoH, was a British-born UNSC Navy Flag Officer, and the de facto leader of the UNSC during the First Great War. Born into a prosperous aristocratic family that could trace its ancestry back to the Napoleonic Wars, Hood joined the UNSC Navy at age twenty, after dropping out of the University of Cambridge, much to the chagrin of his father, who wanted him to pursue a career in economics. After completing basic training with distinction, Hood served aboard the [[w:c:halo:UNSC Lance Held High|UNSC Lance Held High]] for five years before she was destroyed at the First Battle of Harvest. Lieutenant Hood risked his life to pull ten stranded ratings out of the MAC storage room, and after the bridge was destroyed and the captain incapacitated, was the most senior officer aboard and the last man to abandon the vessel. For this show of bravery he was awarded the UNSC Legion of Honour by Preston J. Cole and the Victoria Cross by Queen Victoria III of the United Kingdom. He rose rapidly through the ranks and served with leading naval commanders of the period before obtaining his own command in 2533. He developed a reputation in the service through his personal valour and firm grasp of tactics, as well as an ability to inspire courage and purpose in his men. Hood distinguished himself commanding the [[UNSC Nelson|UNSC Nelson]] during the latter half of Cole's Outer Colonies Campaign, and in the process, was decorated numerous times and lost his left eye, which was replaced by a prosthetic. Promoted to Rear Admiral, Lower Half, he led a Task Group at the Battle of Psi Serpentis, where Cole was killed, and lost his right arm. Kept off the front lines to recover, Hood rose to the rank of Fleet Admiral and was appointed Chairman of the UNSC Security Committee, effectively the leader of the entire United Nations Space Command. He successfully led the defence of Earth against the Covenant in 2552, and oversaw the transition of the UNSC back to civilian government after the end of the First Great War. He refused the option of serving as Secretary of Defence under Secretary-General Pierre Plantard, instead choosing to serve as the 61st Supreme Commander of the UNSCDF throughout the War of Vengeance until his death in 2560 in Operation Tartarus. He was accorded a state funeral by the UNSC. Hood was noted for his ability to inspire and bring out the best in his men, something akin to the 'Nelson touch'. His grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics produced a number of decisive victories. Some aspects of his behaviour were controversial during his lifetime and after: his actions during the Outer Colonies Campaign resulted in allegations of excessive brutality. Hood could at times be vain, insecure and overly anxious for recognition, but he was also zealous, patriotic and dutiful, as well as courageous. He was wounded several times in combat, losing one arm and the sight in one eye. His death at Middengeard secured his position as one of Humanity's most heroic figures, and he is still considered to stand among such military figures as Nelson, Wellington, Nimitz, Cole, and John-117. Early life Terrence Hood was born on September 29th, 2500 in Whitley Bay, Warwick, in the United Kingdom on Earth to the 22nd Viscount, Simon Hood, and his wife Rebecca. The family was proud of its history, and could trace its lineage directly back to Admiral Samuel Hood, a Royal Navy officer of the Napoleonic Wars and the first Viscount Hood. He got on well with his older brother, Thomas, and was never resentful of the fact that his brother stood to inherit the peerage ahead of him. The two of them attended Eton College together, where Hood was said to be an intelligent and committed student who's only real downfall was maths. He was on the school running team, got on well with his peers and formed several lasting friendships, but despite this was described by a teacher as being somewhat lonely. His favourite subject was history, and was intent on studying it at university, despite his father's wish that he study politics or economics. As his studies continued, however, Hood realised that no one in his family had done anything really significant since the first Viscount, despite their proud boasts about their ancestors. It is believed that at that point Hood resolved to do something on par with his ancestor. After leaving Eton with honours, Hood successfully applied to Cambridge University, where he continued to study history in defiance of his father. After Terrence began talking to other students who were considering careers in the UNSCDF, and had a discussion with the university's Navy Liason Officer, Simon became determined to nip this naval enthusiasm at the bud, and called Terrence into his office and commanded him to stop it at once and switch courses to economics. In response, the twenty-year-old Terrence informed him that he had dropped out of Cambridge and already signed up for UNSC duty, and would be leaving for training in two days. Terrence left the seething Viscount in his office, and the two never spoke again. Naval service Training Hood trained at Britannia Royal Naval College, having just scraped in with 182 UCAS points. Despite easily passing the mental and physical aptitude tests, some of Hood's instructors were unsure of his scholarly abilities and his ability to take orders, due to his dropping out of university. However, Hood demonstrated a sound grasp of tactics and proved to be an excellent leader during team problem solving exercises, and his dissertation on the strategic effects of the failure of the Dieppe raid was considered to be one of the finest in his class. War service Unlike many of his peers, Hood chose not to join the Royal Navy Space Service and went straight into the UNSC Navy as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. His Midshipman, or "Snottie", cruise was aboard the Commonwealth-class Frigate [[w:c:halo:UNSC Lance Held High|UNSC Lance Held High]] under Commander Ned Rich. The two men did not get along well - Hood considered Rich an amoral drunkard (an opinion shared by many of the crew, including the executive officer), and Rich considered Hood an upper-class, elitist toff. Tensions were only exacerbated when, after a battle readiness competition in 2522 and the ship won the Navy "E" Award, Rich tried to claim credit for Lance Held High's inspired manouevring, only to be shot down when his exec revealed that Hood had planned most of the manouevres. Hood was promoted to Lieutenant for his planning, and, while Rich recieved no official reprimand, he became distrusted by his superiors. As far a Rich was concerned, Hood was blocking his continued rise through the ranks. The Insurrection and Harvest Hood served with distinction during three tours fighting Insurrectionists in the Epsilon Eridani, Eridanus, and 111 Tauri Systems. While aboard, Hood took the opportunity to take the Principle Weapons Officer's exam, judging it necessary if he was to get a command later in his career. It was during his first tour that he suffered from space sickness, a chronic complaint that dogged him for the rest of his life. Though the entire ship's company was due extended leave in 2525, the Covenant attack on Harvest led to that leave being cancelled as the Lance Held High was pressed into service as a component of Battlegroup D in Vice Admiral Preston J. Cole's Task Force Harvest. Arriving at Harvest in March 2526, everyone in the fleet, including Hood, expected an easy victory, given their unheard-of numbers, but the Covenant vessel's first salvo of plasma destroyed the UNSC Sacramento and crippled the Lance Held High, destroying the bridge and killing or incapacitating most of the command staff. Rich was knocked unconscious and seriously injured by falling support beams, leaving Hood, as the highest-ranking surviving officer, in command. As more ships fell to Covenant plasma, Hood gave the order to abandon ship, carrying Rich to the bridge escape pod (although he later privately admitted that he had considered leaving Rich). Ten ratings, however, were trapped in the burning MAC round storage room. Hood and CPO Abbie Crowder proceeded to the storage room, even as the ship lost structural integrity and began to fall apart. Using a plasma torch, Crowder cut away the fallen beams while Hood pulled the ratings out one by one (three later died from poisoning from burning depleted uranium MAC rounds), before proceeding to the final escape pod. After being picked up by the UNSC Everest, Hood and Crowder were commended by Admiral Cole, and both were awarded the Legion of Honour. As a British citizen who had trained at Dartmouth, Hood was also eligible for the Victoria Cross, which he was awarded in a highly-publicised ceremony at Buckingham Palace by Queen Victoria III in May 2526. Rich was quietly reassigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence, a capacity in which he proved to be quite competent, and was eventually promoted to the position of commander of field operations, though he continued to despise Hood for (as he percieved it) destroying his career. Aboard the Edinburgh Hood returned to active duty in July 2526 after some well-deserved leave aboard the UNSC Destroyer Edinburgh under the command of Commander Annabel Morrigan as the ship's Principle Weapons Officer (PWO). Morrigan initially disliked Hood, believing that the young officer's decorations would go to his head, but she quickly withdrew from the attitude after seeing Hood's positive effect on the tactical section personnel. As part of a fleet-wide effort to counter Covenant technical superiority, Hood and his subordinates busied themselves by studying sensor data from previous battles with the Covenant, particularly those pertaining to plasma torpedo and shielding systems. They reasoned that a plasma torpedo could be dissipated with an electromagnetic pulse, thus disabling the magnetic guidance field, or forced to disperse if it was hit by enough force or enough debris. Hood therefore recommended that the UNSC's ineffective Archer Missiles be re-purposed as anti-plasma torpedo countermissiles. He also suggested that Covenant shields could be brought down by an electromagnetic pulse, which would deactivate the magnetic containment field and destroy generators. He reccommended that the warheads of nuclear missiles be heavily modified in order to increase the amount of x-rays and gamma rays they release upon detonation. When the gamma and x-rays released by the blast hit the target's hull, they excite and release electrons as they penetrate the interior. This phenomena is referred to as a system generated electromagnetic pulse (SGEMP) because the accelerated electrons create electromagnetic transients. Systems must be configured with special cables, aperture protection, grounding, and insulating materials in order to survive these transients; analysis of the scant few captured Covenant electronics revealed that they did not possess such systems. Interested in Hood's ideas, Morrigan passed his analysis up the chain of command of Battle Group India until it reached the desk of Preston Cole, who factored them into his battle plan for the Battle of Alpha Aurigae. Arriving in the system in October 2526, no one in the fleet had anything like the confidence they had had at Harvest earlier in the year, despite outnumbering the Covenant one hundred and seventeen ships to twelve. Hood's plan to use Archer Missiles as countermissiles worked as well as he had hoped, saving scores of ships that would otherwise have been lost, but the sheer weight of fire from the Covenant ships (five of which were Assault Carriers), meant that thirty-seven lighter ships simply ran out of missiles and were destroyed. Twelve nuclear warheads, modified according to Hood's instructions were used to breach the shields of the Assault Carriers with EMPs before destroying them with MAC rounds, before the UNSC fleet turned on the lighter Covenant Battlecruisers and Frigates and destroyed them with their sheer weight of numbers. For his inspired thinking, Hood was put on the shortlist for promotion to Lieutenant Commander and was offered a position in the Office of Naval Intelligence's Research and Development department as part of what would become Project EXCALIBUR. He refused, as he wanted to get a command later on in his career, but privately he knew that working with ONI would bring him back into contact with Ned Rich, and he remained with the Edinburgh. Though his countermissile plan continued to be used throughout the war, FLEETCOM was uneasy about using its expensive, precious nuclear warheads as throwaway shield-breachers, and so the idea was shelved until Hood's report on the effectiveness of EMPs against shielding was re-examined again by the EXCALIBUR team for the creation of the RIM-442 Anubis. Command of the Agamemnon Command of the Nelson Admiral Benevolent dictator Post-war Death and legacy Personal life A traditionalist, Hood eschewed more modern methods of battlefield planning in favour of planning battles with games of Kriegsspiel, an idiosyncrasy that was passed on to many of his staff. It was remarked by his contemporaries that Hood disliked coffee and considered hot cocoa to be far superior. Something of a gambler, his only known vice, Hood was a formidable Poker, Gin Rummy, and Baccarat player. A naval historian, Hood could discourse on topics ranging from the Battle of Artemisium to the Battle of Midway and the fist space engagements of the Interplanetary War. As already stated, Hood had a rocky and later non-existant relationship with his father, but maintained good relations with his mother and brother. Hood entered into a civil partnership with his long-time partner Sebastian Charles Roderick in 2547 in a private ceremony on Reach. A university historian, Roderick was killed during the invasion of Reach in 2552. Decorations (note: UNSC personnel who trained at the military academies of their homeland's armed forces and/or served in their homeland's armed forces are permitted to recieve their homeland's decorations in addition to UNSC decorations) *Legion of Honour *Victoria Cross *Order of the Bath *Order of the British Empire *Navy Cross *Navy and Marine Corps Medal *Distinguished Service Cross *Combat Action Ribbon *Joint Service Meritorious Unit Commendation *Navy "E" Ribbon *Meritorious Unit Commendation *Navy Rifle Marksman Ribbon *Elizabeth Cross *Purple Heart Behind the Scenes *Hood's depiction in this article is mostly based on the life and naval career of the British naval officer Horatio Nelson. Of particular note are his numerous wounds, and his inspired command style, which were both based on Nelson. However, the two do not share similar fates - Nelson died in his most famous victory, the Battle of Trafalgar, while Hood was assassinated by the Blood Covenant during the War of Vengeance. Though there was a battle, Hood had little to do with its execution. Despite Nelson and Hood's similarities, the image in this article is in fact of Chester Nimitz, United States Navy. *Hood's title of Viscount Hood is an attempt to reconcile the various conflicting titles awarded to Hood throughout the Halo series. For this article, Hood was a member of the Order of the Bath, and is therefore known as "Sir Terrence Hood". After the death of his father just after the Battle of Reach, he inherited the title of Viscount Hood, and so it would not be unreasonable to assume that he would be (inaccurately) referred to as "Lord Hood". Category:War of Vengeance Category:Canon Expansions Category:UNSC Naval Personnel